Saturday, December 6, 2014

SLIFF 2014: The Tribe

Title: The Tribe

Country: Ukraine

Score: 8

Sergey is a new
student at a boarding school that looks like it gets about as much government
funding as an empty lot with a city park sign. Paint peels off the walls. Kids
are packed 2-4 to a dorm room. The wood shop looks like a factory floor for
exploiting child labor. And exploiting is definitely the right word, given what
goes on at this place. The alpha males of this student ‘tribe’ bully whoever
they please, sell drugs, mug locals and prostitute female classmates at a seedy
truck stop nearby. It gradually and rather matter-of-factly becomes clear that
the staff are in on, if not all of this, then at least the worst of it.

Sergey initially
takes his lumps, but earns a measure of respect from the upperclassmen and is
entrusted by them with various gang tasks. After one of the pimps is killed, in
a scene of expertly choreographed anticipation that is excruciatingly hard to
watch (although far from the hardest), Sergey is promoted. He soon falls in
love – although I use this word in the broadest possible sense – with Yana, one
of the girls. She doesn’t exactly reciprocate his emotional attachment, but she’s
seems grateful for sex she can actually enjoy. But since this isn’t the fantasy
land of most onscreen romances, the relationship just brings down trouble on everyone’s
heads. Appealing to a higher authority for justice is clearly not even a
thought that would cross Sergey’s mind, since corruption extends in every
conceivable direction that he could take. He has no other option then to take
matters into his own hands.

I’m giving you the
plot first, but the plot isn’t what has the festival circuit abuzz over this
film. Most reviews lead with this: all the characters are deaf. They speak
exclusively in sign language. There is no dialog. There are no subtitles. There
is no translation.

One possible
theory as to why is that most deaf audience members have to watch movies in
this state all the time: lacking complete information; trying to piece together
what is happening from body language and context. You will quickly figure out
how, or you better leave the theater. And if you are squeamish, you probably might
want to leave the theater anyway, because this is a very grim, unpleasant
movie. But it is saying a lot about marginalized vulnerable communities, about
youths coming of age in neglected corners, about living in a cutthroat society
and an unstable country. And even the deaf, especially the deaf, will want to
hear what The Tribe is saying.

The intimidatingly
hard to pronounce Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy is also a master of his craft,
employing long-take mobile camerawork well-suited to his strutting, ruthless
material. As I hinted at above, the locations are also spot-on: wretched
cubbyholes of post-Soviet pitted concrete and tarnished metal.

This is easily the
most disturbing fiction film I’ve seen this year, but the fact that I can’t get
it out of my head isn’t because it bombarded me with senseless shocks and
grotesquery. It has gotten into my head and under my skin in the way that
provocative cinema should. This may be a film I’m able to like more as I get a
little distance from it.